kevinlms

If a business doesn't promote itself, who do they expect to do so? All it needs is a 2 page colour document and links for more information on the website.

The difference between model trains and planes, tanks, cars and lots of other types of kits, is that people expect model trains to MOVE and tow wagons and coaches. That is a key difference that sets model trains from static kits that the others are. By the time you mess about providing a reasonable quality chassis (unlike the ones made for Airfix/Kitmaster, as you pointed out), to fit under your body kit, you may as well have provided it! There is nothing new on this approach, Tri-ang tried with their CKD 'kits', which proved to be a poor market for them. Obviously customers expected them to be cheaper, as the buyer was doing the assembly work. But it didn't work out like that, because despite them being easy to assemble, Tri-ang still had to deal with buyers, who lost parts and generally couldn't put them together. Tri-ang, Hornby Railways and others have NEVER gone down this path again, because it is simply a poor investment. It's proven to be cheaper to sell complete models. These can be split up by 3rd party people to sell if they wish, which has occurred for decades. No point re-inventing the wheel, if the wheel is too hard for a small percentage to deal with. Even if 2-5% have problems, your profit margin will be toast!

Surely the way to a 'budget' range for beginners, is to make lots of them at a cheap price, not divide up the market? Not that I see that the idea is any different to what Hornby currently do with their 'Railroad' range. Using old tooling that has long been paid off. I guess what some are advocating, with replaceable parts, is like Action Man or Barbie Doll, where you could buy various outfits and accessories to fit the basic doll. However that was never a cheap market, a premium market if anything!

It's actually quite simple. For Block 3 (area if you like), you need a toggle switch (more commonly known as a Double Pole, Double Throw DPDT) to connect to either controller 3 (default) OR controller 2. For Block 4, you need a toggle switch to connect to either controller 4 (default) OR controller 2. For these switches, the middle 2 wires go to the track, with the left pair (or top depending on orientation) to one controller, the other pair to another controller. There isn't actually much to go wrong, since you have the gaps in the right places - give it a try.

OK fixed my statement to clarify. Authors name is a key part to an index and certainly should be added ASAP. More information makes it easier to find, with a bit of a description too.

The paperwork is horrendous!

Straight ahead?

Here's one from Australia. Not only driving and breaking the Covid 19 restrictions. Four people were caught travelling in a car at 175km/h on the Tullamarine Freeway near CityLink on Monday night. The unlicensed driver and his passengers were all fined and the car, with bald tyres, was impounded at a total cost of $7000.

The driver ought to have been suspicious upon finding others in the cab on his arrival. As a minimum asked if they had done anything while in possession of the loco, but still ought to have checked for himself.

I'm glad to read that the driver was downstairs at the time! First Bus said three passengers and a driver were on board and all were downstairs at the time of the incident. Mind you, he would have had a better view of the upcoming disaster, if he was indeed upstairs at the time!

Yet, if you search RMweb, you will find lots of posts asking - why do trains stall on points?

The KISS principle often doesn't work! While it sounds fantastic, sometimes you get far better results from something a little more complex. Cab Control is one and of course it only needs to be done properly once. Note you don't need each cab (controller) to access each section, it can be greatly simplified by limiting which cab, has access to what sections. For example, the one normally assigned to running the outside loop, doesn't need access to the 2 sets of sidings, but does the inner loop. I hope that makes it a little easier to understand.

If you run a bus around the layout (an excellent idea), then you're going to want to wire your LEDs in parallel with a series resistor each. Resistor calculation is as previously posted, which will depend on your actual voltage.

It ought to be remembered that the initial standard for Chinese made Hornby, was for a back to back of 13.8mm!* This explains why early stuff didn't like Peco Code 75 points. Hornby made the decision to change the dimension early 2002 I believe. * 13.8mm is listed as such in the review of Hornby 'Battle of Britain' class in Railway Modeller 2001 December 'Latest Review'. This was a random issue I picked up.

Monty Wells started the index, but it wasn't him who did the online version. The Peco indexes don't include the author and the title often is not descriptive enough.

Available at the Arsenal fan shop?

My late father was back in the UK for his only trip back. The first stranger he had a conversation with, asked him if he knew a particular person who lived in Melbourne. The answer was yes, he lived across the road from my father! So not just Yanks.

I read somewhere that the British market was happy to only pay for the pancake motors. The only one with a non pancake motor was the Class 20, which was only a half way house. The flywheel drive stuff certainly didn't make it to the Australian Lima.

Could it be due to the fact that these short 'y's have not been upgraded yet? After all Peco need to work their way through the range and if the tooling is in good nick, it won't be done soon.

Don't forget that pre WW2, most of the 8F's weren't built yet! Only the first 126 I think, 8000-8125. So they were fairly new, so not filthy.

I was under the impression that Lima always did quite well in the British market. There was no shortage of limited edition diesels right to the end. I suspect their big problem was their international range, which covered all 4 corners of the world. Trying to get that market balanced for quantities, must have been near impossible. Near the end, there was a lot of Australian prototypes, which didn't sell well. It certainly wasn't cheap.

Have a search for this book. It's American, but some excellent ideas there. https://www.hpb.com/products/how-to-build-model-railroad-benchwork-9780890242896 The methods described best suit fixed layouts (I assume yours is), but the same techniques can be applied to portable layouts.

Probably such an index could be compiled. Problem is some one still has be capable of managing the project, which covers many things, not least that the information is in a compatible form. I can fully understand why some people create indexes of their own personal interests. Why, because it is time consuming work, so why would they 'waste' time on items that are of no interest? Better to do some other titles or, gasp, do some modelling based on what one has found in an index! If I remember correctly, the original compiler of the ONLINE version of the MRJ/BRJ indexes offered others the software to create other indexes of other magazines - but not to do the work. How many took him up on this offer, I wonder. Where are the results? Certainly it can be done, for example all copies of Model Engineer are available in one index - this goes back to the first issue in 1898! The introduction gives an insight to the work involved, especially if you want it to be meaningful and consistent. There is always the issue of what to include and what to leave out? http://www.groundlevel.demon.co.uk/me_index.html

'Saw you at the show', doesn't actually tell a trader anything much. Did the people come in not know of their existence before, in which case the show did achieve something. If they were occasional existing customers who 'saw you at the show', then that is pointless. Advertising is difficult, as you often never know how effective advertising is. It's particularly hard, if customers don't need your product/service straight away. A supermarket can advertise a particular special and people turn up in quantity the next day and they sell out. A plumber/electrician might not be required for many months or even years. I've done advertising and had people respond, more than 12 months later, will I honour it? Yes, I do.

Fact is the 'halcyon days of the 1950s', is now 65 years ago and so anyone hanging around platforms then, taking numbers has to be into their 70s. I was born in 1956, so I'm outside that group, but also my local line was electrified when I was 5 (LT&SR), so I have no recollection of steam at all in normal service. But in some respects I buck the trend, as I have never left model railways like so many others have and come back many years later. Despite my background, the LMS trains I prefer are those of more northern types. Why, I don't really know where that came from, as I've never lived in northern England, but did Scotland for 4 years. Yeah, I know makes no sense, but it's me! I think an important difference from the 1950s to today, is the huge variety of trains back then, when virtually anything could be seen in much of the country. I don't mean that GWR Kings could be seen throughout the country, but the fact that it you waited long enough to see a dozen trains, you'd get several different types - except on the LT&SR! Fact is most modern railways are much less interesting than railways used to be. Many lines are suburban only and while there are plenty of trains, there might be 1 or 2 varieties. Is it surprising that many youngsters don't get interested in trains any more? Many have possibly never taken a regular train, so why should they even think about model railways as a hobby - they don't.